“You’re on rare form, this morning,” Schumacher panted, clearly surprised by Hannibal’s aggressiveness. “Is this the level of performance you gave MacDonald?”
“Heh,” Baller snorted bitterly. “If I’d been on my game like this, they’d have carried that Limey bastard out of the octagon on a stretcher.”
And then he launched into an assault that had the German reeling.
Powerful swings landed punishing blows – hits that Schumacher only barely blocked with his elbows and fists. One roundhouse kick even sent him sprawling, and the German narrowly avoided going down twice more as Hannibal went at him without mercy.
But just as Hannibal had observed before, Schumacher was adaptable. The next time Hannibal came swinging, his fury blinded him to Manfred’s change of tactics. The German ducked under Hannibal’s meaty fists, and hooked his elbows under the big fighter’s thighs.
It’s not easy to yank over a 235lb man; but Schumacher did it with practiced ease – and a moment later, Hannibal went sprawling onto his back like a felled oak.
For a moment, the wind was knocked out of him. Hannibal struggled to defend himself as Schumacher leapt on top of him.
At first he thought he’d managed; wrapping his legs around Schumacher’s muscular hips, and trapping him in a full guard position. From there, Hannibal brain was already trying to figure out which joint lock or chokehold he should attempt.
But the German was a step ahead. He lurched forward – one of the few directions you can go when you’re in a trunk hold – and snatched for Hannibal’s wrist. Baller was too slow to stop him; and with a lurching sense of horror, he realized what Manfred was attempting to do.
With almost surgical precision, the German pinned Hannibal’s wrist to the canvas, right next to his ear. With all Schumacher’s weight behind it, it was impossible for Hannibal to lift it away.
And then, grinning eagerly, Schumacher slithered his other hand under Hannibal’s pinned arm, and locked the grip by grabbing his own wrist on the other side.
And then he rolled onto his side – or, as wrestling experts sometimes called it, he ‘turned the lock.’
Hannibal groaned in pain, as his shoulder, elbow and wrist was brutally bent in a direction nature never intended. The agony was white hot, and it took him less than a second to slap Schumacher’s shoulder desperately with his free arm.
As soon as Schumacher felt him tap out, he released the vice-like grip – and Hannibal flopped to the canvas, panting for breath.
Face softening, Schumacher leaned over and asked: “You okay, Baller?”
Hannibal snorted in frustration.
“Yeah,” he grunted, sitting up stiffly, and rubbing his aching shoulder. “Yeah, I’m fine.” The sting of the shoulder lock was mild compared to the humiliation of tapping out. “That was some move, brother.”
“Ja, ja,” Schumacher extended his hand, and Hannibal clasped it – getting pulled to his feet. “You had me, as you say; ‘on the ropes.’ I pulled out my secret weapon.” The German tapped his nose. “Keep it a secret, ja?”
Hannibal narrowed his eyes, and studied the German as he smiled cheerfully back at him.
“Yeah,” he nodded thoughtfully, kneading his aching shoulder. “Yeah, sure, brother.”
But in Hannibal’s mind, he was lodging that move away; slotting Schumacher’s tactic into his memory banks in case he ever had to face the German for real in the octagon.
“Why don’t we take a breather,” Manfred suggested, and Hannibal gratefully acquiesced.
As they clambered out of the boxing ring, Jules came over bearing bottles of Poland Spring.
“Yo, dawg,” he patted Schumacher on the shoulder. “That move you pulled… That was tight.” Jules turned to Hannibal. “Man, you tapped out like a little bitch, blood.”
Hannibal’s eyes narrowed, and water splashed down his front as his fist tightened on the bottle.
“Nein, nein,” Schumacher clarified. “Your brother was tougher to pin than anybody else I’ve fought. He’s not a bitch. He’s a bull.”
“And he’s more than welcome to prove it any time he wants,” Sally purred flirtatiously, stepping up and curling one of her hands around Schumacher’s sweaty bicep.
Hannibal’s anger turned to embarrassment, and then to good humor. He snorted bitterly, and took a long, slow swallow of water.
“Well, hey, look,” Jules injected, “I’m here to train with my brother, yo. But maybe…” He jerked his thumb at the grimacing Hannibal, “…seeing how you busted him, and all. Maybe you could teach me that trick.”
Schumacher turned and looked the scrawny black kid up and down, as if measuring his worthiness.
Finally, he pursed his lips, and then turned to Hannibal.
“Vat do you say, Herr Alexander?”
Baller looked at his skinny, over-eager brother. Part of his ego smarted at the thought of this talented German fighter teaching Jules something he couldn’t.
But, the more rational part of him knew that he was there to give his brother the best chances he could of surviving his bout in that illegal MMA cage match. And right now? Those chances had a German accent.
Chapter Fifty
Hannibal
A week and a half of training had transformed Jules’ temperament.
As the scrawny kid crawled up into the boxing ring, Hannibal watched his more attentive attitude with a certain amount of pride. Gone was the arrogance and the snotty comments. Jules was listening to Schumacher outline the move he’d pulled with complete, undivided focus.
His brother was curious, and he shut up to listen when the German was talking. He was finally acting like the kind of student… Well, that their dad Cornell had always wanted him to be.
And, as Hannibal studied his brother, he started to wonder if he’d been as hard on him as Cornell was.
He’d always given Jules shit for dropping out of karate… and then his guitar lessons. For never sticking to anything long enough to get good at it. But he wondering if that was because these were things Jules was being made to do, instead of choosing to do them himself.
Out of all he’d done for his brother over the course of these last two weeks, it seemed like just listening to him, and letting him get on with it without judgement, was what Julius was most appreciative of.
The big fighter snorted bitterly.
Despite fighting his entire life against it, was he turning into his father after all?
Fortunately, a cough from behind his distracted Hannibal from his thoughts. It was Mike Siro, the wizened old man limping up to him and gesturing to Jules and Manfred as they wrestled in the boxing ring.
“I thought he was paying us for lessons?”
“Heh,” Hannibal’s lips curled. “Yeah, that’s how it’s supposed to be. But he’s giving Jules a freebie, and given how my groundwork it, I didn’t think it would be fair to say no.”
Mike watched as Schumacher lay on the canvas, and wrapped his legs around Jules’ hips. Slowly, he talked the scrawny black kid through the motions of pinning his wrist, and then ‘locking’ it into that brutal submission hold.
“Ah, the Americana,” Mike nodded, recognizing the move. “Risky stuff. You have to use both your arms to attack just one of his. If you screw it up, you leave yourself wide open…”
“But if you don’t…” Hannibal rubbed his throbbing shoulder, which served as evidence about how effective the armlock could be.
Siro grunted in acknowledgement, and then changed the subject.
“Yo, come into my office for a second.”
Leaving his brother in the hands of his German sparring partner, Hannibal following Mike into the dingy office, and let him close the door after him.
“Check this out,” pushing aside folders and sheaves of paper, Siro revealed a small laptop. Onscreen was a fighter profile from MMA website Sherdog. “I was doing some research. Not a lot to go on, but this might be the ‘Sam Hudson’ character your brother’s supposed to be
fighting next week.”
Hannibal took a seat in Mike’s creaking office chair, and studied the information onscreen.
It didn’t make him feel good.
The picture was super low-resolution – like it had been pulled from an America Online webpage from the late nineties. Even in the old pic, Sam Hudson looked like tough sonofabitch. He was in his mid-forties when it was taken – God knew how old he was now – and he looked halfway between Mickey Rourke and Charles Manson.
“He must be in his fifties now,” Siro concurred with Hannibal’s guess. “Haven’t seen him on the professional circuits at all, but there have have been mentions of him hitting the roster in piss-ant leagues and amateur circuits in Texas, Oklahoma and Ohio for the last ten years or so.”
“So he’s a has been?”
“Or a ringer,” Mike growled. “Word I heard is that the guy goes way back with Rodney Callahan – the cat who runs that illegal MMA league your brother’s mixed up in.”
Mike growled at Hannibal coldly: “From what I heard, Callahan was Hudson’s manager fifteen or twenty years ago, or so – when they were both legit. Then Hudson got a back injury, got strung out on pain pills and eventually got kicked out of the league for failing multiple drug tests.”
“As far as I can make out, he scratches a living on the amateur wrestling circuit, and sometimes comes up here to fill in a spot on Callahan’s fight list. The guy’s long past fighting age, but he’s got nothing else to fall back on.”
Closing the computer screen, Mike looked up with a worried expression on his face. “He’s bad news, Baller. I think the guy’s a ringer.”
“A ringer?” Hannibal scoffed. “He’s old as shit. Hell, this is the first time I’ve felt good about Jules’ fight. If his opponent’s some strung-out old guy, he might just be in with a shot.”
Mike narrowed his eyes.
“Don’t let his age fool you. Shit, I’m in my seventies and if you and I rolled out there on the mats, I could still give you a run for your money.”
Hannibal wasn’t too proud to concede that point.
“So,” he asked. “What do you want me to do?”
“Be fucking careful,” Mike warned. “You’ve given your brother months’ worth of training in a week and a half – but he’s still a rookie.” He sucked in his breath over his huge teeth. “I don’t want him getting hurt.”
Neither did Hannibal, and he was still worried that was a possibility.
He’d started to wonder if this was the whole scheme behind Red’s illegal fight league: Attracting hopeful young amateurs and then drawing them in by letting them win rigged fights.
Finally, when the stakes were high enough, the fights would turn real; and the eager young contender would get a beat-down from a real fighter – and lose their purse money for good measure.
Kind of like how pool sharks lost the first few games, then cleaned up when their opponents got cocky (and greedy.)
“I’ll talk to Jules,” Hannibal said grimly. That was a conversation he wasn’t looking forward to having.
Chapter Fifty-One
Hannibal
By the time Hannibal left Mike’s office, the boxing ring was deserted. So was much of the gym, actually – lunch on a Saturday was a notoriously quiet period.
Assuming Schumacher and Jules had hit the showers, Hannibal padded towards the locker room. It was time to confront Jules about his upcoming fight – and that was going to be a tough conversation to have.
As he pushed open the creaking wooden door to the locker room, Hannibal wondered if Manfred was still going to be hanging around – and, if so, how it might even be easier to discuss the illegal league if he could get the German to weigh in on it himself.
But the moment his bare feet hit the cold tiles, all thoughts of that issue disappeared.
Hannibal froze.
There were sounds emerging from the changing room.
Weird sounds.
Cautiously, Hannibal peered his head around the corner; and nearly gasped at what he saw.
Jules, and Manfred, of course. But, more weirdly than that, an almost play-by-play reoccurrence of the awkward situation Hannibal had found himself in the previous week.
Jules and Manfred were standing wrapped in nothing but towels – just as he’d been the other day. But also in the room was Sally Fox; looking elegant and beautiful in a lightly and breezy dress.
“Isn’t he a schönen schwarzen?” The German was purring. “Didn’t I promise you one, Liebling?”
“Yes, darling,” she purred back in that crisp, British accent. “Why, yes you did…”
She was standing in front of Jules, looking tiny and slender and pale. Gazing up at the scrawny black kid with her big, green eyes, one of her hands was pressed against his chest – and the other was slipping lower and lower, right under his towel.
Just as she’d done with Baller.
For a moment, Hannibal felt a stab of irrational jealousy, as if it was offensive that this couple were trying to seduce his little brother in the same way they’d tried to seduce him. Didn’t they know he was the prime meat in this family?
But then he’d brushed those thoughts aside. He’d had plenty of rich women hurl themselves at him in Vegas, and plenty of husbands eager to watch. He’d already turned Schumacher and his girlfriend down. He shouldn’t be offended they’d looked for an alternative to play with.
“Say, honey,” and oblivious the fact he was the second string choice, Jules seemed to be playing along. “W-what are you doing?”
“It’s okay,” Sally was purring at him, with the same tone she’d used when she’d pulled this move on Hannibal. “Manny? He likes to watch…”
And there was Manfred Schumacher, looking on eagerly, with a huge hard-on tenting out the front of his towel.
Hannibal watched, hidden in the doorway. For a moment he was tempted to burst in and stop what was going on. After all, this was his little brother the two of them were messing around with – and he was still wildly protective of him.
But, then again, his brother was twenty one, and more than capable of making decisions – and screw-ups – for himself. He’d been proving that well enough these past few weeks!
So Hannibal hung back, and decided to let his brother make that decision for himself. After all, of all the wild accusations that Cornell and Jules had thrown at him, he didn’t want ‘cock block’ to be one of them.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Julius
“So I will, as you Americans say, ‘lay it down for you,’” Manfred was saying, as Sally Fox caressed Jules’ scrawny chest. “I promise meine kleine Foxy a big, black American dick – and rather than your brother, we wondered if you’d…”
The German left the last part of that sentence unsaid; but Sally’s hand reaching into Jules’ towel said everything the skinny black kid needed to know.
“Woah!” He gasped, as the towel crumpled around his ankles, and Sally’s slender fingers curled around his stiffening cock.
“Manny is such a naughty man,” Sally was purring, as she started to stroke Jules’ swelling shaft. “He says I’m his little princess…”
“Ja, ja,” Manfred nodded eagerly.
“…but he gets off on watching me do the dirtiest things.”
And then she bit her bottom lip, and looked up into Jules’ eyes with a smolderingly sexy expression.
“Oh, fuuuuck,” Jules was gasping. He looked back and forth, towards the locker room door. “W-what if somebody comes in here, man?”
“Oh, that’s half the fun,” Sally purred, licking her lips. “I don’t know. If they’ve got a cock as big and beautiful as this one, maybe I’ll get on my knees and give it a kiss, too.”
And, as she said that, the beautiful English girl sunk to her knees on the cracked and dingy tiles, and looked straight at the big, black cock swelling to erection in her hand.
Jules groaned.
His cock was just as impressive as Hannibal’s, and looked o
bscenely huge and black in comparison to Sally’s pale, slender fingers. She could hardly stretch them around his hard-on, as it finally reached its full length, and she giggled as she tried to stroke him.
“My goodness,” the little English girl gasped. “It’s so big.” She looked over her shoulder, at her boyfriend. “Manny, I don’t think I’ve ever had one this big before.”
“Heilige Scheiße!” Schumacher groaned, letting his towel drop and standing there with his own pale, angry cock standing to attention. “That looks so fucking sexy, Foxy.”
And it did. You didn’t need to be a fan of interracial porn to see how deliciously sexy the contrast of Sally’s pale skin and Jules’ chocolate brown complexion was.
Sally giggled again, looking over her shoulder and licking her lips.
“Shall I kiss it, Manny? Do you think it tastes like chocolate?”
“Du dreckige kleine Schlampe!” Manfred groaned, stroking his cock. “Yes, kiss it. Suck that big, black American cock.”
Sally giggled again, and turned back to Jules.
Then, without missing a beat, the beautiful English rose looked up at the black man towering above her, and stretched open her pretty mouth.
“Oh, fuuuuuck,” Jules groaned, as he felt the warm, wet, delicious sensation of Sally’s mouth envelop the head of his cock.
“Oh, ja!” Manfred’s eyes widened, and spittle flecked his lips. “You look so fucking sexy, meine kleine cocksucker.”
“Mmmmpgh,” Sally mumbled, her mouth full. She balanced herself on Jules’ thigh with one hand, and caressed his heavy, egg-shaped balls with the other. “Mmmmph!” Saliva was drooling down her chin as she struggled to cram Jules’ impressive cock into her little mouth.
“J-Jesus,” Jules slumped against the locker, and gazed down as the beautiful English girl eagerly sucked his cock. “Fuck, baby… That feels amazing.”
Sally’s eyes flashed with pride, and she swirled her tongue around the tip of Jules’ swollen cock.
Baller: An Interracial MMA Stepbrother Romance Page 13
